In general, various problems including defects, faults, and errors may be resolved as they occur in planning and development, manufacturing, or operation at customers' sites of products or apparatuses. The problems of products include faulty designs in development departments, initial faults or faulty lots in manufacturing factories, and faults specific to customers' environments and aging at the fields of the customers. Although the problems may be resolved at the places where the problems occur, solutions for the problems and the know-how of solutions may not have been shared between the customers or sites. Accordingly, if problems known in factories occur at customers' sites, it can take a long time to resolve the problems because persons-in-charge at the customers' sites, for example, cannot find appropriate maintenance procedures. In addition, support staffs who have received questions regarding a product or problem may offer the wrong solution.
Apparatuses controlled by using firmware may be monitored by remote maintenance centers connected via networks. However, persons-in-charge cannot resolve problems occurring in the apparatuses because latest maintenance data, for example, may not be compiled in the apparatus.
For example, the following solutions are proposed in related art. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application Publication No. 5-61283 discloses a system in which data about copiers is automatically collected and a center manages the collected data and automatically outputs an operation guideline. Also, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application Publication No. 2002-83118 discloses an information acquiring tool for acquiring detailed information useful for analysis of faults in electric products has been proposed. The information acquiring tool is carried by a maintenance service staff and is used in a system in which fault diagnosis information used for identifying a faulty circuit in an electric product connected to a network is transmitted from each door and a maintenance-repair service center managing customer information and product information diagnoses the fault in the electric product. Also, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application Publication No. 2002-109138 discloses centralized control of quality defects occurring in a series of life processes including development and design of products, manufacturing and shipment of the products, and distribution of the products in the markets. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application Publication No. 2004-21942 discloses a method of managing knowledge information in a knowledge information network, which is an information communication network connecting multiple departments. In this method, a contact center referring to a reference database that is build to make use of registered knowledge and information is provided on the information communication network.